If the execution of Saddam Hussein has proven anything, it’s that the new, democratically elected Iraqi government has learned a lot of valuable lessons from the Bush administration. One lesson: when caught in a Big Lie, Lie BIGGER.

Witness the evolving (or devolving) narrative regarding the hanging. Shortly after Saddam’s death and the official “silent” video of Hussein on the gallows was released, news outlets like CNN and the BBC were regaled by eye-witnesses who described Saddam’s last moments as a combination of vintage Jimmy Cagney or Al Pacino in “Scarface.”

Judge Munir Haddad described Saddam’s demise thusly: "He was reciting, as it was his custom, 'God is Great!' and also some political slogans like: 'Down with the Americans!' and 'Down with the Invaders!'"

Haddad went on: "One of the guards present asked Saddam Hussein whether he was afraid of dying.

“Saddam's reply was that 'I spent my whole life fighting the infidels and the intruders', and another guard asked him: 'Why did you destroy Iraq and destroy us? You starved us and you allowed the Americans to occupy us.'

“His reply was, 'I destroyed the invaders and the Persians and
I destroyed the enemies of Iraq... and I turned Iraq from poverty into
wealth.'

He said: 'This is my end... this is the end of my life. But I started
my life as a fighter and as a political militant - so death does not
frighten me.'"

Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie said of Saddam:

“He was a broken man. He was afraid. You could see fear in his face.”

Sami al-Askari, a member of Parliament, recalled Hussein shouting:
“Long live the nation! Long live the people! Long live the
Palestinians.”

The witnesses stopped short of having Saddam yell: “Top of the world, ma!” and “You’ll never take me alive, coppers.”

A hiccup occurred when CNN reached an unnamed government employee via
cell phone who said, “Saddam’s body is in front of me. It’s over.”

When asked about chanting heard in the background, the official said:
“These are employees of the Prime Minister’s office and government,
chanting in celebration.”

He later mentioned that they were dancing around the body.

Undaunted, al-Rubaie went out of his way to portray the hanging as
dignified, telling CNN: “The whole process from A to Z has been
videoed, and it's kept in a safe place, and there was absolutely no
humiliation to Saddam Hussein when he was alive, and after he was
executed. So there was no -- there was all respect to him, when he was
alive, and after the execution when he was like a body, if you like ...
I'm honestly proud of the way it was executed. It was done in a proper
way, in all the international standards and the Islamic standards, and
Iraqi standards. I'm really proud of the way it went on.”

Within eighteen hours, the scenario described above would prove to be,
using sophisticated legal terminology, horseshit. A cell phone tape of
the execution would surface both on Arab TV and the internet revealing
the event to be something as dignified as a frat blow-out and
possessing all the judicial gravitas of a public lynching.

Off-screen, attendees taunted and mocked Saddam. Munkith al-Faroun, one
of the prosecution team can be heard yelling: “Please, I am begging you
not to. The man is being executed!”

“Go to hell!” yells one attendee.

“Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada,” chants another, mocking Sunni Saddam with
the name of Moqtada Sadr, the Shiite cleric who runs one of Iraq’s
biggest militias.

“Is this what you call manhood?” Saddam says, sternly.

He’s hanged, mid-prayer and the taunts continue.

So, within a few moments, one of the world’s most reviled despots
became a martyr, showing more dignity than any “official” in the room.

Bush, who slept through the execution (Surprise!) but later issued a
statement praising the Iraqi government reacted to the new “Ox-Bow
Incident” taint by doing what he does best. Pulling a Sergeant Shultz,
he essentially proffered an “I know nussink” response.

Nouri al-Maliki’s government began to tap dance so feverishly, it resembled Gregory Hines on speed.

Prosecutor al-Faroun told “The New York Times” that he recognized one
of the cell-phone videographers. It was Security Advisor al-Rubaie.
Within twenty-four hours, he recanted and the al-Maliki government said
that it was a guard who broadcasted the event.

"One of them I know. He's a high-ranking government official,"
al-Faroun continued, declining to name the man. "The other I also know
by sight, though not his name. He is also senior.”

The government launched an investigation. Now, here’s where it gets
tricky. Depending on which wire-service report you read and when, this
became a detective novel as penned by Ken Kesey.

First, a single guard was arrested.

Then, he wasn’t arrested.

Then, according to Reuters: "Two Justice Ministry guards have been
arrested. Other guards have identified them as having filmed the
hanging," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's aide Sami al-Askari told
Reuters.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told a news conference: "The
investigation is ongoing and we have identified those who flouted the
rules ... Even for a dictator like Saddam, the law must be obeyed."

Well, maybe it wasn’t the Justice Ministry guards, after all. Al-Rubaie
blamed the video on people trying to destroy Iraq. “Whoever leaked this
video meant to harm national reconciliation and drive a wedge between
Shiites and Sunnis.”

Okay. Now we have mysterious strangers. But, wait! There’s more.

Via A.P.: "In the past few hours, the government has arrested the
person who videotaped Saddam's execution. He was an official who
supervised the execution and now he is under investigation," said a key
al-Maliki adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was
not authorized to release the information.

Oy! About those leaks!

Between arrests, the al-Maliki government tried a “Hail Mary” pass. It missed.

"The execution operation has been mischaracterized for political purposes," said Maliki adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi.

Mr. Rikabi, who was present at the execution, said the sentence had
been carried out properly. "What has happened is not an insult or
degradation," he said.

Visuals? Meet verbiage.

Thud.

Al-Rubaie then took a page from the Republican playbook and blamed the
media! On CNN, he declared: "I believe there was an infiltration to the
crowd inside the chamber. These people have done a lot of harm, and I
honestly believe that this may well have been planned by one of these
Arab television channels infiltrating, and probably this video has been
sold to this Arab television station."

Thud.

Twenty-four hours later, there were new and improved infiltrators. Said
al-Rubaie “There was an infiltration at the execution chamber.” Who
this time?

A senior Interior Ministry official said the hanging was supposed to be
carried out by hangmen employed by the Interior Ministry but that
"militias" had managed to infiltrate the executioners' team.

"The execution was carried out by militias and outsiders. They put
aside the team from the Interior Ministry that was supposed to carry it
out," the official said.

And, of course, nobody saw it. Nobody knew about it. Although the
executioners put on their festive snuff film ski masks in front of all
the attendees, nobody even mustered a “Hey! That’s not Biff!”

So far, the Iraqis have pinned the blame for this travesty of justice
on everyone but the Keebler elves. They do, however, have their
suspicions regarding “The Lucky Charms’” Leprechaun.

Bush, still in his bubble, floated a couple of public relations trial balloons that soared like Acme anvils.

Tony Snow couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about, saying:
“It's interesting because there seems to be a lot of concern about the
last two minutes of Saddam Hussein's life and less about the first 69
in which he murdered hundreds of thousands of people. That's why he was
executed…”

No, Tony. He was executed for killing 148 people in 1982, about the
time he became our ally. The bigger trial, the one that would have
highlighted all those pesky Iraq-American connections, never did get to
proceed on account of the hanging!

The White House continued to back-pedal. “The president is focused on
the new way forward in Iraq so these issues are best addressed out of
Iraq, out of Baghdad,” deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel
said. “Prime Minister Maliki's staff have already expressed their
disappointment in the filmings, so I guess we'll leave it at that.”

BushCo. then threw a uniform in front of the cameras. It backfired.

In Baghdad, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the U.S. military spokesman,
said the execution of Saddam Hussein would have gone differently if
U.S. officials - not Iraqis - had orchestrated it.

“Would we have done things differently? Yes we would have. But that's
not our decision. That's the government of Iraq's decision,'' Caldwell
said.

Ouch! Gets worse.

As he faced his own death on the gallows, Caldwell said, Saddam "was
courteous, as he always had been, to his U.S. military police guards.

"He spoke very well to our military police, as he always had. And when
getting off there at the prison site, he said farewell to his
interpreter.

"He thanked the military police squad, the lieutenant, the squad
leader, the medical doctor we had present, and the colonel that was on
site."

So much for swagger, eh?

Adding to the hilarity, Master Sgt. Robert Ellis, a military nurse who
cared for Saddam for nearly a year and a half, publically remembered
him kindly.

"He basically talked about his wife, and his children," Ellis told CNN.

"He was an avid reader. Loved to read and write. He had a lot of
stories that he had written. He had a pamphlet that he wrote in every
day and then when time came to visit him he'd read things to me," the
army reservist said.

Saddam also saved his bread crusts to feed birds and watered a patch of
weeds outside his cell, recalling his days as a farmer.

"These shouts were spontaneous. The guards who called out were outside the chamber," he told Al Jazeera.

In the video, however, Saddam is seen reacting to people standing below him.

Okay, so Saddam’s execution didn’t exactly unite Iraqis. So, whom did
it bring together? Everyone from Charles Krauthammer to one of Saddam’s
judges.

Jim Hoagland of “The Washington Post” wrote: "The mishandled execution
carries a larger message that President Bush must absorb for the
decisive address he plans to give on Iraq as early as next week: If
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his aides cannot control a gallows
chamber containing 20 people, how can they hope to manage a country
that is disintegrating under the weight of religious and ethnic
hatreds?"

Columnist Robert Scheer stated: "It is a very frightening precedent
that the United States can invade a country on false pretences, depose
its leader and summarily execute him without an international trial or
appeals process. This is about vengeance, not justice, for if it were
the latter the existing international norms would have been observed.”

Iraq’s main Sunni clerics’ group blamed America for the execution via an internet post.

"The execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the manner
it took place was carried out at the behest of the occupier and some of
its allies in and outside Iraq”, wrote the Muslim Scholars' Association.

Saddam's hanging was "a purely political act," and the fact that it
happened while Iraq's Sunnis were marking the first day of Eid al-Adha,
or feast of sacrifice, shows "the grudges (they harbor) and their quest
to provoke" the Sunnis, the association said.

Saddam’s first judge, Rizkar Mohammed Amin, said the execution was
illegal, stating Iraqi law banned executions during the Eid al-Adha
festival period that marks the end of the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

The four-day Feast of the Sacrifice began for Iraqi Sunnis on Saturday
-- the day Saddam was hanged in Baghdad -- and on Sunday for Shiites.

Iraq's National Security Adviser al-Rubaie denied that Saddam was
executed on Eid al-Adha, in an interview with CNN just hours after the
hanging.

"Eid starts from daylight -- we had managed to execute him well before
the sunrise," Rubaie said, calling Tony Snow on speed-dial.

Charles Krauthammer, big-shouldered conservative columnist, was also
not amused by the lynching. In an essay entitled “The Hanging: Beyond
Travesty,” he wrote: “For the Iraqi government to have botched both his
trial and execution, therefore, and turned monster into victim, is not
just a tragedy but a crime -- against the new Iraq that Americans are
dying for and against justice itself…

“Consider the timing. It was carried out on a religious holiday. We
would not ordinarily care about this, except for the fact that it was
in contravention of Iraqi law. It was done on the first day of Eid
al-Adha as celebrated by Sunnis. The Shiite Eid began the next day,
which tells you in whose name the execution was performed…

“The whole sorry affair illustrates not just incompetence but also the
ingrained intolerance and sectarianism of the Maliki government. It
stands for Shiite unity and Shiite dominance above all else.

“We should not be surging American troops in defense of such a
government. This governing coalition -- Maliki's Dawa, Abdul Aziz
al-Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and
Sadr's Mahdi Army -- seems intent on crushing the Sunnis at all costs.
Maliki should be made to know that if he insists on having this
sectarian war, he can well have it without us.”

Siding with Krauthammer is, of all people, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

“People are executed all over the world, but what happened in Baghdad
on the first day of Eid al-Adha was unthinkable. I didn't believe it
was happening," he said.

"Why did they have to hurry? Why hang him when people are reciting
their holiday prayers? Then the pictures of the execution were
revolting and barbaric.”

That’s quite an eclectic group Saddam’s death has brought together.

So, as Bush shuffles his cabinet, tossing out members with the spine to
stand up against his Iraqi surge, as tensions build in the Middle East
and Iraq continues to crumble, let’s consider the words of Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki who, in an interview with “The Wall Street
Journal,” reflected on his gig.

“I didn’t want to take this position. I only agreed because I thought
it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again.”

Al-Maliki, who started a four-year stint as Prime Minister in May of
last year, went on: “I wish I could be done with it even before the end
of this term.”

Nouri? Could you puleeze get Dubya on the line and try to get him to think likewise?

And, both of you, don’t let the law hit you on the way out.

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It always amazes me (it really shouldn't anymore), the plethora of outrage when an Iraqi is killed or mistreated and the paucity of anything slightly resembling outrage when hearing of people being pushed into wood chippers, people being forced to their knees and their necks sawed off, fathers (now there's a name for him) proudly holding his daughter in front of him, proclaiming his pride in the fact that she will be raised to die as a homicide bomber. Those people could have done so much worse to him. I admire their restraint.

Baron
Of course - we should never be outraged when Iraqis die - after all - they are the 'terrorists' aren't they? It was all Iraqis who hit the US on 9-11, it was funded and planned by Saddam himself - with Osama... they were great friends and ideologically aligned like two peas in a pod. If fact, they loved each other and in their blurry-eyed passion they planned to destroy America... together... the two of them. They culled the hijackers from Baghdad - all members of the National Guard if I do remember correctly... to take over the planes on the fateful day some six years ago.

Why... dang' it Baron - why not just take his head and put it on a pike on the front lawn of the white house or Bush's ranch down in Texas. Or even blow up some 6 foot by 4 foot pictures with lovely oak frames to display to the press like they did with Saddam's sons.

...
The fact that this hanging was carried out with the chanting, insults, taunting and mocking of Saddam is disgusting. Don't get me wrong, Saddam is guilty of many counts of premeditated mass murder and anyone who says this trial was "unfair" must approve of murder on any scale. A trial was not even necessary in this case. I have friends in Kuwait who I have not heard from since 1990. Does anyone remember what happended in Kuwait in 1990 and 1991? Whould anyone be so stupid to think that the kind, gentle people of Kuwait didn't die horrible deaths (no, not a quick and painless hanging) at Saddams orders? Should Hitler have been given a trial also? If Hitler had been found and hanged, would that have also been wrong?

...Iraq's National Security Adviser al-Rubaie denied that Saddam was executed on Eid al-Adha, in an interview with CNN just hours after the hanging.

... because according to him the execution took place before sunrise when the Eid began.

Thud!

Even the US military, not known for cultural awareness, understands that the Islamic dates begin at sunset on the previous evening and end at sunset. see http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/islamic.html for details. Mowaffak al-Rubaie with credentials of a UK health professional reminds me of a certain FEMA guy. Good job Rubby!